Bears prepare to turn up heat

Camp provides chance to get some answers

July 14, 2002|By John Mullin, Tribune staff reporter.

Chicago sports fans owe the Bears a special debt of gratitude this year. Well, a lot of years, really.

Why? Because now that the All-Star Game is over, so is most of what constitutes watchable baseball in Chicago this season, if it even lasted to this point. With the Cubs and Sox a combined 20 games out of first place, "Chicago baseball" now consists of debating Frank Thomas' future with the White Sox or whether Bruce Kimm still will be the Cubs' manager in '03. Or does resolution of either issue really matter?

Besides, Warrick Holdman and Brian Urlacher project to have more quality hits than any two Cubs combined.

Mercifully, the Bears are available to take sports minds away from the heat on the thermometer and the lack of it on the local diamonds. Training camp begins in precisely 12 days--first practices are Friday, July 26 at their new venue at Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais--and players and coaches are in the final days before the start of a season with questions unlike any in recent years facing the Bears. Among the stickiest:

Can the Bears stand success?

For most Bears last season was their first winning campaign in a Chicago uniform. Only James "Big Cat" Williams among current Bears had been though a winning season as a Bear. Shane Matthews was also around in '95, the last previous winning season, but only as a fringe player, and he's gone now.

Last year players marked the early part of the season with weekly expressions of indignation that anyone would have doubted they were a good team. Never mind that the preceding five seasons and seven of the previous nine were sub-.500.

Now they will be forced to deal with assumptions that they are good after all, contenders for the NFC North title and possibly more. Success can breed overconfidence, a proven precursor to collapse.

And along with winning has come money issues. The Bears and general manager Jerry Angelo rewarded Holdman, Marty Booker, Olin Kreutz, R.W. McQuarters, Jim Miller and Bryan Robinson with huge contracts over the past seven months. And while the pursuit of megabucks can be a motivator, the achievement of those bucks can be exactly the opposite. Angelo, coach Dick Jauron, their staffs and the organization put their money into character as well as talent. How that money affects players will figure into the team's fortunes in 2002.

The best thing that could happen for the Bears might be for fans and media to start talking about how last season's 13-3 was lucky. Players with chips on their shoulders are dangerous.

Can the Bears win as "America's Guests?"

Home-field advantage is traditionally worth a couple of points per game, roughly a field goal when you are in front of your own fans. The Bears, though, have no "home" games, only road games, owing to the makeover of Soldier Field that has them traveling 180 miles--about the same distance as Green Bay's Lambeau Field--to the University of Illinois' Memorial Stadium for home games. The Bears traditionally spend nights before games in Chicago at a downtown hotel, but that's at the end of an easy drive, not a trip to O'Hare followed by a flight too short to sleep on before staying overnight in Champaign.

The added burden of travel will be difficult to quantify, but it will be there. Could playing home games in Champaign drain something out of the players that will hurt down the road and possibly cost them a game?

"I don't know," Angelo conceded. "It's hard to gauge that and I don't want to use that as an excuse if we don't duplicate or do better than we did last year. We're still in-state, a short flight and bus ride away, and we still have our fans. That's important. So we'll see how that plays out. I'm more concerned about staying healthy."

Who plays left tackle?

This, even more than quarterback, is the position battle to watch. With Miller and Matthews passing on time, the Bears were the NFL's best pass-blocking offensive line in '01. But that was with veteran Blake Brockermeyer at left tackle, and he is now a Denver Bronco.

Neither of the two contenders for the starting job--rookie Marc Colombo and second-year player Bernard Robertson--has ever taken a regular-season NFL snap. Can a rookie or a virtual rookie start at one of the game's most difficult positions, the one to the quarterback's blind side?

"I played my last years in Cincinnati when we drafted Anthony Munoz, so I look at that and say, `Yeah, a rookie can play left offensive tackle,'" Jauron said. "But not a lot of them, and to date there has been only one Anthony Munoz. It's difficult. But is it impossible? No. The guy would have to be really good."

If "the guy" isn't really good, Miller or Chris Chandler will be at considerably more risk than anyone likes, and Anthony Thomas will have more trouble finding running lanes on the left. That is not a good thing for a team that is serious about a smash-mouth running game.

How creative will the offense be?

Simply put, as creative as it needs to be. Offensive coordinator John Shoop has drawn fire for a perceived lack of imagination. But the only things the Bears care to imagine are victories, and the off-season evaluation of the offense hasn't altered the core philosophy.

"We are going to run the football and we're going to be a real disciplined outfit," Shoop said. "We didn't get sacked much last year and we didn't have many penalties. In terms of mental errors we were near the top and we're going to stick to that formula."

Only Pittsburgh (13-3) and San Francisco (12-4) averaged more time of possession last season than the Bears. That's "creative" enough to suit the team.